Antonio de Spinola

Antonio de Spinola (11 April 1910-13 August 1996) was President of Portugal from 15 May to 30 September 1974, succeeding Americo Tomas and preceding Francisco da Costa Gomes. He was the leader of the conservative MDLP party.

Biography
Antonio de Spinola was born in Estremoz, Portugal in 1910, and he rose through the ranks of the Portuguese Army. He became closely involved in the Portuguese colonail wars in Africa, from 1968 as commanding general and high commissioner of Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau). There he created a relatively successful Africanization programme whereby half of the Portuguese Guinean army was formed by African troops. As a reuslt he became something of a hero in the Portuguese colonial wars. After his return to Portugal, when he became Chief of Staff of the armed forces, he published a best-selling book based on his experience in Africa, entitled Portugal and the Future (1974), in which he urged economic liberalization, democratization, and a political solution to the African colonial wars. This book by one of the country's highest generals precipitated a major political crisis, and led to the 1974 Carnation Revolution, in which Marcello Caetano was overthrown. The tenets of the book became the programme of the new military government, in which he served briefly as interim President from May to September 1974. Worried by the growth of the Portuguese Communist Party, he led an abortive coup in 1975 and, after a few years in exile in Brazil, returned to retirement in Portugal. He died in Lisbon in 1996.